Tod Rutherford | Syracuse University (original) (raw)

Papers by Tod Rutherford

Economic and Industrial Democracy, 2019

Comparing Canadian, German and Swedish automotive unions, this article examines why since the 199... more Comparing Canadian, German and Swedish automotive unions, this article examines why since the 1990s unions have increasingly accepted High Performance Work Systems (HPWS). ‘External’ factors such as globalization, outsourcing and state neoliberal policies are important, but drawing upon Gramsci and Burawoy, the article adopts an ‘internal’ perspective emphasizing (a) how the mystification of the wage relation is a basis for capital’s workplace hegemony and (b) the role of union agency via ‘defend and restore’ and ‘modernize and adapt’ strategies. The article argues that by incorporating union resistance, HPWS has acted through unions as much as it has acted upon them.

Canadian Public Policy, 2017

This article reports on a recent survey of Canadian automotive component manufacturing plant mana... more This article reports on a recent survey of Canadian automotive component manufacturing plant managers that focused on issues related to innovation and the influence of public policy on plant-level competitive strategies and performance. Three questions are addressed: (a) Do public policies inhibit or contribute to plant success, (b) does the experience of Canadian-owned plants differ from that of foreign-owned plants, and (c) does the experience of small- and medium-sized plants differ from that of large plants? The analysis is first situated within the context of the industry and recent Canadian automotive and manufacturing policy and concludes with the implications of our findings for public policy development.

Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society, 2014

ABSTRACT Through a case study of the Great Lakes region automotive industry spanning the USA–Cana... more ABSTRACT Through a case study of the Great Lakes region automotive industry spanning the USA–Canada international border, this article critically reassesses the concept of regional resiliency and the sustainability of the recent resurgence of American manufacturing. We argue that regional resiliency needs to be reframed around regional integration into global production networks and the restructuring of workplace governance especially with regard to the significant ‘recalibration’ of labour relations reflected in declining rates of unionisation, lowered labour costs and more ‘flexible’ employment relations. The region is no longer as dominant in North American automotive manufacturing as it once was and must respond to increasing competition from emergent auto-making regions in the southern USA and Mexico.

Capital Class, Oct 1, 2013

Jamie Gough Work, Locality and the Rhythms of Capital: The Labour Process Reconsidered, Continuum... more Jamie Gough Work, Locality and the Rhythms of Capital: The Labour Process Reconsidered, Continuum: New York, 2003; 326 pp: 0826462847, $178.95 (hbk) Economic geography's engagement with Marxism has been a chequered one. Despite a promising beginning in the late-1970s and the important theoretical contributions of David Harvey in reading Marx geographically, since the mid-1980s there has been a steady decline in economic geography's interest in Marxism. This reflects both seemingly unresolved problems in Marxian analysis and the rise of more institutional and post-structural perspectives. For many economic geographers, the utility of Marxism to explain more micro or local-scale variegation is in doubt, and these include Storper (2001:158), who dismisses Marxism for 'never [having] been able to go beyond large-scale descriptions to cause-and-effect analyses of the detailed internal dynamics of capitalism'. It is refreshing, then, to find that Jamie Gough's Work, Locality and the Rhythms of Capital: The Labour Process Reconsidered represents a robust defense of Marx and Marxist research which will be of great interest both within geography and the social sciences. Most notably, Gough deploys labour process theory to examine the restructuring of London manufacturing between 1976 and 1982. Using a longitudinal survey of London manufacturing firms, he examines the critical period in which the post-war crisis of British manufacturing reached its climax. One of Gough's goals is to illustrate the dynamics of this restructuring in terms of in situ change and firm relocation. Gough uses his analysis to explore the insights of Marxist theory, especially regarding the labour process. Recent debates on restructuring and social change have largely by-passed the labour process which was the object of intense theorising in the 1970s and 1980s. However, Gough reinvigorates this concept not by revisiting the narrow and often fruitless discussions of whether labour control and deskilling are the principal features of the capitalist labour process, but as a critical lens to account for both the fragmented and collective nature of the working class under capitalism. While post-structural and other non-Marxian frameworks have emphasised difference, they rely on non-work identities and have either not viewed the labour process as significant in the creation of difference, and/ or have not seen its possibilities in overcoming this between workers. One of the strengths of Gough's analysis is that he does this by locating individual labour processes and their role in the construction of working-class difference and commonality as part of a nested hierarchy of capitalist accumulation. Gough divides his study into three main parts. In Part I, he develops a theory of local economies and their relationship with global and firm scale processes. This section is abstract, and reviews debates on the dynamics of workplace change in the context of the accumulation of capital. Gough adds some new insights into value theory while differentiating Marxian political economy from other approaches. Thus he argues that innovation and increased product quality by firms represents a value productivity strategy as opposed to volume productivity, which focuses on intensifying labour output, and that these strategies, while strongly related, can come into conflict with each other. This emphasis on the dialectical nature of capitalist development contrasts with institutionalist and other approaches, since the latter have a more narrow focus on use-value, rather than on the necessary contradictions between use and exchange-value. Similarly, he points out that while institutionalist geographers have valuable insights into the role of the often regionally based socialisation of labour and firms, they underestimate the vulnerability of regions to disruption by the under- and over-accumulation of capital. Part II focuses on the experience of London manufacturing firms. …

Japanese automakers have become an integral part of the North American economy, with total invest... more Japanese automakers have become an integral part of the North American economy, with total investment approaching $20 billion, direct employment ex- ceeding 40,000 and 3 million vehicles being built annually. The investment and productive capacity can be considered a function of globalization trends and/or deliberate policy initiatives by governments and firms. This paper briefly introduces the global context for a set of papers that explore how the Japanese automakers responded to the opportunities and challenges posed by the North American market. It outlines the growth of the global automobile industry and periods of foreign direct investment (FDI) by European, American and Japa- nese firms. The distribution of Japanese investment is shown to vary during the 1990s as production capacity is increased in each major continental market. The Japanese investment in North America is shown to have created new ca- pacity equal to the entire Canadian automobile industry, the fifth largest ...

The International Economy, 2000

Social Indicators Research Series, 2000

New directions and opportunities are emerging in Canada’s automobile industry as Japanese firms c... more New directions and opportunities are emerging in Canada’s automobile industry as Japanese firms continue to shift production overseas and adapt to local conditions. Japanese investment in three major assembly plants in Canada totals over four billion dollars and automotive trade between the two countries is valued at over three billion dollars annually. the Japanese-owned automobile assembly plants in Canada were examined through a series of interviews with senior managers to gain insights into the processes of globalizaton and localization. While some researchers assert that Japanese automotive investment in North America represents a ‘triumph of organization over culture,’ we argue for a more complex process of mutual adaptation in which national differences are still very influential. Overall, Japanese producers have adapted their labour relations, buyer-supplier practices and delivery systems to the North American environment leading to the development of a ‘hybrid’ industrial system. the series of 1997-98 plant expansions have increased opportunities for workers and suppliers while also increasing the range of value added functions undertaken in Canada.

Relations industrielles / Industrial Relations, 2020

The automotive industry has long been a leader in the introduction of new forms of work organizat... more The automotive industry has long been a leader in the introduction of new forms of work organization and technology—including mass production and high performance work systems (HPWS). It has also been a focal point for how trade unions negotiate such systems. Recently, much attention has focused on Industry 4.0 (I 4.0)—a manufacturing system featuring advanced robotics, digitalization and artificial intelligence. However, in the automotive industry, I 4.0 is confronted with considerable technical and social challenges, and I 4.0 paradigms have been criticized for marginalizing the continuing importance of employees in shaping, if not ‘hybridizing,’ such new production processes. Based on a study of UNIFOR union locals in Canadian automotive assembly plants, we argue that I 4.0 has to be analyzed in terms of the ways unions have influenced the almost universal adoption of HPWS in that sector. We thus investigate the ways unions have impacted HPWS and its implications for their roles ...

Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development, Sep 16, 2021

Dialectical Anthropology, 2018

Economic and Industrial Democracy, 2016

Since 1970 Article 18 provided important employment protection for workers in larger firms in Ita... more Since 1970 Article 18 provided important employment protection for workers in larger firms in Italy. Its core aspect (i.e. reinstatement in the case of unfair dismissal) was recently overturned by the Jobs Act for employees hired after its approval. To explain Article 18’s abolition, the authors assess the explicative power of (1) stronger exogenous pressures from economic international institutions, and (2) weaker endogenous pressures from unions and business organizations. Documentary analyses and semi-structured interviews with key informants reveal that while these two forces are critical, they tend to ‘read off’ the state policy decision making role, which, the authors argue, is central to explaining the overturning of Article 18.

Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 2012

ABSTRACT This paper examines the Canadian Supreme Court's 2007 ruling in favour of the He... more ABSTRACT This paper examines the Canadian Supreme Court's 2007 ruling in favour of the Health Employees Union (HEU) versus the British Columbia government. Based on international labour law, this ruling recognised col-lective bargaining as part of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. While recent research in human and labour geography on labour law and the state have emphasised its contingent, topological and site-based nature I argue: (i) that this case reflects how Canadian unions became deeply embedded in post-war hegemonic splicings of law and space and the state's role in the reproduction of the wage-labour relation and (ii) while the HEU's struggles and the use of international law contest such splicings, these are still sharply inflected by exist-ing nation-state legal systems that remain both relatively resilient and ambivalent about labour rights. The HEU case thus reveals that scaling up by law may not protect worker interests if labour is otherwise weak.

Advances in Spatial Science, 2003

In the following paper, I explore the role of unions in workplace and regional innovation. I link... more In the following paper, I explore the role of unions in workplace and regional innovation. I link this to the learning region or cluster approach which stresses learning through interaction and its facilitation by social capital. While these approaches are insightful, it is less focused on internal firm organization (see Martin and Sunley, 2002) and in particular, how labor-management relations play a critical role in firm learning and innovation strategies. The literature on unions and innovation has two principal approaches. The first is an equity oriented and industrial relations literature, which finds positive associations between unions and innovation (Freeman and Medoff, 1984; Eaton and Voos, 1992). The second is econometric research, which is generally more mixed in its findings of union impacts on innovation (see Menezes-Filho, 1998; Addison and Hirsch 1989).

Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 1992

JONATHAN BEAVERSTOCK*, ANDREW LEYSHONt, TOD RUTHERFORDt, NIGEL THRIFT? and PETER WILLIAMS? *Lectu... more JONATHAN BEAVERSTOCK*, ANDREW LEYSHONt, TOD RUTHERFORDt, NIGEL THRIFT? and PETER WILLIAMS? *Lecturer in Geography, Department of Geography, Loughborough University of Technology, Loughborough LEU1 3TU tLecturer in Geography, ...

Management Research News, 1989

The past decade has witnessed a dramatic change in the scale and nature of production subcontract... more The past decade has witnessed a dramatic change in the scale and nature of production subcontracting in Britain. Recent surveys on buyer‐supplier relations indicate an increase in outsourcing whilst, at the same time, this has been accompanied by a general reduction in the number of firms accredited supplier status. These trends are underpinned by major corporations slimming down for reasons of cost and competitiveness, with vertical disintegration to satellite and subcontract firms. The emergence of closer links between firms, which this implies, reflects wider changes in the business environment, based on the adoption of new attitudes and practices in British industry.

Labour / Le Travail, 2004

Contributors include Gerard W. Boychuk (University of Waterloo), Rodney Haddow (St Francis Xavier... more Contributors include Gerard W. Boychuk (University of Waterloo), Rodney Haddow (St Francis Xavier University), Thomas R. Klassen (Trent University), Stephen McBride (Simon Fraser University), Tom McIntosh, and Peter Stoyko (Carleton University).

Geography Compass, 2010

ABSTRACT In this paper I examine how labour geographer’s research on the work-place, the wage rel... more ABSTRACT In this paper I examine how labour geographer’s research on the work-place, the wage relation and class have evolved and assess their implications for the sub-discipline. Since the early 1990s post-structural and post-structurally informed Marxist approaches have both challenged classical Marxism and added new insights. In particular, the former have de-centred the formal work-place as a site of value production, exploitation and class and emphasized the critical role of intersectionality of class with other identities such as gender and race. Paralleling and informing this shift has been a significant restructuring of capitalism as formerly stable employment is disrupted via (often global) outsourcing, downsizing and the blurring of enterprises and organizations. Thus post-structural perspectives have developed important insights into the active agency and the differentiated nature of labour, the work-place and class. Yet despite some congruence between post-structural and Marxist approaches I argue that there remain important empirical and theoretical concerning the work-place, the wage- relation and class. I conclude that while post-structural approaches are correct in arguing that the formal work-place and wage relation are not the exclusive sites of work, surplus production or class identity, over-emphasize the decline of the formal work-place and the wage relation’s role in collectivity and class identity more traditional Marxian concerning this relationship remain powerfully relevant to both labour geography and progressive politics.